I don’t believe in a God that doesn’t know how to dance

“To see these light, foolish, pretty, lively little sprites flit about – that moves Zarathustra to tears and songs. I should only believe in a God that would know how to dance.

And when I saw my devil, I found him serious, thorough, profound, solemn: he was the spirit of gravity – through him all things fall. Not by wrath, but by laughter, do we slay. Come, let us slay the spirit of gravity! Thus spoke Zarathustra.”

We take from Nietzsche the title for this program that, for the second consecutive year, the Directors’ Week dedicates to Brazilian films by contemporary artists. At a time when Brazil is experiencing one of its worst ethical, moral, social and identity crises, it was inevitable that we look for the films that confront our present and past nightmares with a promise of joy. This promise, however, does not stem from the denial of our present or from the childish refusal to face our tragedy; nor is it confused with a vain, populist hope for better days.

The artists presented here inhabit and occupy a shattered world that is haunted by all the past and still present daily violence, offering in exchange what they can to face impotence: bodies, dance, delirium – small communions to resist annihilation. In these films, the ruins of our modern projects and the dystopian landscapes announced in abandoned public spaces are occupied by ghosts that our progress has not been able to – and did not want to – save: madmen, blacks, transsexuals, prostitutes, hybrid beings. Between ghosts and survivors, these bodies dance, shout, and re-sensualize a world in which there seems to be less space for the powers of difference. Not without melancholy, they claim their right to existence and love.

If we take from Nietzsche the inspiration for the title of this program, it is from the sound of Caetano Veloso that these films invite the god of Zarathustra to dance. More specifically, the song that, exactly fifty years ago, at the dawn of one of the most violent periods in Brazilian history, and marking the beginning of the Tropicália movement, pointed to a breach of existence, perhaps the only possible existence “between the legs, flags, and teeth, under a sun of crimes and faces of presidents”¹. If history repeats itself as a farce, let us continue, once again, “with our eyes full of vain loves, why not?”1. Joy is the proof of the pudding.²